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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Black Pus - 0: Ultimate Beat Off

Last year, Brian Chippendale, drummer extraordinaire(!), released his fourth solo album as the disgustingly monikered Black Pus (for the record, Sassigrass won’t listen to Black Pus because the name grosses her out – which is wonderful). In line with his previous releases, the title of the album was prefaced with a 4. 4: All Aboard the Magic Pus. The album was as chaotic and noise barbed as anything Chippendale has done as Black Pus or with his other bands, Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer (are there others?). At the same time, with his fourth record he brought the charm with several whimsically destructive takes on pop glee, albeit pop wired with some of the more violently propulsive noise flourishes your likely to hear. I loved it and love that album even more today. That brings us to this new monstrous beast. I noted the numerical indications of Chippendale’s previous releases as Black Pus because the new album literally starts us off at ground zero. I don’t know if this indicates material that predates the rest of his catalog or simply a post-preemptive strike, but for whatever reason the latest Black Pus is titled 0: Ultimate Beat Off. I remember reading about this album two or three years ago – at least the Ultimate Beat Off portion – so perhaps the date at which this was first started is of import in the zero, but additionally important is the idea of the record. Apparently "Ultimate Beat Off" is Brian Chippendale versus Brian Chippendale. On 0: Ultimate Beat Off it is very apparent. Straying to the other end of the noise rock spectrum, on this album Black Pus loses the wimpy charm and any traces of pop in favor of three long tracks of layers and layers and layers of Brian Chippendale’s pummel-you-in-the-skull drumming along with heavy doses industrial electronic noise too insure the maximum in gratuitous dissonant gluttony. Really, it doesn’t get much uglier than this as Chippendale has attested to himself. This is his “ugliest cd yet.” 0: Ultimate Beat Off is an endurance test; a test warm hearted, ear bleeding, lo-fi drum fanaticism. It’s Chippendale exorcizing every demon in his body out of his drum kit. I recently saw part of a really cool documentary on PBS about music and one of the people featured on it was this guy with Tourette syndrome. The guy played the drums as the only means to control his crippling tics. I think Brian Chippendale is the exact opposite. On camera he seems like a fairly nice, kinda geeky guy like on the Lightning Bolt documentary, The Power of Salad, but once he hits the drums he sets loose on a schizophrenic journey of Tourette syndrome through percussion. It’s really pretty amazing, and while I probably won’t be able to digest 0: Ultimate Beat Down as often as 4: All Aboard The Magic Pus, I am definitely glad that Chippendale has created it for those days when you just need to obliterate every available sense.